The Myth I Never Met

My great-grandfather was a what-you-see-is-really-what-you-get kind of man. To him, your word was all you had in this life and when you arrived at the proverbial gate the sum of your choices would all come back to how well you kept to your word. My great-grandfather, grandpa Ted, was also the stoic type. Though he'd agree, silently, that the academics in Athens overcomplicated this disposition. Like most people from the old times, he didn't talk about the rotten fruit or the pesky weeds or the fact that he was hungry for more— he just kept on keeping on. No one had a bad word to say about grandpa Ted when he died, but everyone had a story to tell. About how he kicked the head clean-off a rattlesnake to save a bullet. Or how he loved my great-grandma Honey so much you'd of thought he found a world's worth of gold in her heart. I think the story my uncle Phil tells about how Ted taught him a 'lil lesson in humility is my favorite. So now, whenever I'm feeling full of myself or need reminding of the multitude of things greater than me, I fill up a bucket with water, plunge my hand to the bottom, and remove it just as swiftly so I can see the big hole that I've left.